


Mermish

by Colubrina



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Don’t copy to another site, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 22:36:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20496446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Colubrina/pseuds/Colubrina
Summary: When Luna Lovegood and Theodore Nott use the same tree to read under during her fifth year they become friends but can romance survive when you're on different sides of a looming war?





	Mermish

The first time Luna saw the lanky, dark-haired boy reading near her favorite, rather secluded spot, she felt uneasy. He looked to be older than she was and sported Slytherin colours. She sat, a little further from the tree than she liked, and eyed him. He must have felt her stare because he glanced up and nodded at her, a quick and indifferent but courteous nod and, reassured, she pulled out her own book and started to read.

The next time she went to her spot, he wasn’t there, and she forgot about him.

The time after that, he was there again and, again, they exchanged quick nods. The next time, nods and smiles. Luna sat down next to him after that because, after all, he was near her tree, taking her shade, and he’d smiled and, well, Slytherin or not, he seemed nice.

He looked down at her book and squinted. “You’re reading a grammar on Mermish?”

“Mmm,” she said, opening to her bookmark. Mermish noun declensions interacted with adjectives in a very tricky way, and she was having trouble quite wrapping her brain around the patterns.

“Aren’t you a few years behind me?” he pushed, and she looked up.

“Just one, I think,” she said. “But I’m very smart.” Then she looked back down at her book and put her finger over the endings to see how her memorization was going.

“Mermish,” he said again, shaking his head. “Why not learn something useful, like French?”

“Oh,” she said, still reciting Mermish declensional endings in her head. “I already know French. And it’s not that useful, really. Too similar to English.”

“But you could travel in France,” he said, cocking his head to the side and looking at her.

She shrugged. “I’m not as interested in being able to talk to people as I am in understanding the ways different cultures map their thoughts. The language you use inherently limits the way you can frame ideas; for example, romance languages divide nouns into gender classifications, and I’m curious whether that binary, or sometimes tertiary, division into masculine and feminine generates a wholly different way of looking at the world than, say, languages like Mermish which uses multiple gradations of depth as the nominal system differentiator.” She paused and looked at him. “Sorry. People don’t like to talk to me for a reason.”

“No, it’s okay.” He looked down at his book, a smile on his face. “I did ask.”

. . . . . . . . .

When she ran into him in the hall, moving along with a group of boys, he grinned at her. “Hi, Mermish.” She grinned back, pushing her hair out of her eyes; she noted he seemed to be friends with Draco Malfoy. Oh well, no one was perfect.

“What are you doing talking to Looney,” one of the boys asked him. 

“Looney?”

“Luna Lovegood. She’s as nuts as they come.”

She was moving down the hall when she heard him say. “Whatever. I like her.”

“You would,” she heard, an exasperated, irritated exclamation that made her smile. He did seem to make her smile a lot.

. . . . . . . . . .

The next time they met at the tree, he seemed embarrassed. “I’m sorry about my friends,” he muttered. “They can kind of be arseholes.”

“It’s okay,” she shrugged. “Everyone calls me Looney.”

“Don’t you mind?” He seemed surprised, and that surprised her. People tended not to care that she was generally dismissed as unstable; even in Ravenclaw, she was a bit of an outcast. 

“Well,” she pulled the book he was reading out of his hands and looked at it. “Sometimes. It doesn’t really matter. Nomenclature is kind of arbitrary anyway. What’s this?”

“Muggle physics.” He took it back. “Aerodynamics.” He shrugged and added, “I like Quidditch.”

She pulled her own book out and shoved him over a little so she could lean on the tree too and still look over at what he was doing. “Makes sense, I guess.”

He laughed. “Only to you, Mermish.”

“Luna.”

He tucked her hair behind her ear. “I thought nomenclature was arbitrary?”

That tricked a laugh out of her and, from the way he smiled, he rather liked that. She bit the inside of her cheek and grinned. Smiling again with this boy.

“My name’s Theo, by the way.”

“A lot of cultures believe when you know someone’s name you have power over them,” she said flipping her book back open and reviewing the endings for the declension that loosely translated as ‘nouns really near the surface.’

“Do they?” He stretched his legs out, but she was already chanting ‘ish, osh, ush, esh, oesh, ash, etsh’ and had apparently stopped paying attention to him as he added, “in that case, it’s Theodore Ferdinand Nott, Mermish.”

. . . . . . . . .

By late fall, their meetings had become expected. She looked forward to seeing him, sometimes doing homework, sometimes exploring some obscure interest. He liked physics, Muggle music, and complicated logical puzzles. He yanked on her hair, drilled her on declensions and conjugations and never asked her about Harry Potter, which was a relief since most people, if they deigned to talk to her at all, mostly wanted to ask her nosy questions about their famous classmate.

When it started to snow, she realized she’d rather see him than stay warm and wasn’t that interesting. She hiked out to their spot only to see an annoyed-looking Draco Malfoy waiting for her.

“Don’t fuck with Theo,” he said, without bothering to introduce himself or say hello or ask what she thought of the snow. “He’s obviously nuts for you, for whatever reason, because he hates the cold and he’s coming out here just to read in your dotty presence. If you hurt him, I’ll kill you.”

She tilted her head to the side and looked at the boy – the man, she supposed – stomping his feet in the snow. “I think you should worry more about your own journey than Theo’s,” she said.

“What the fuck does that even mean?”

“Did you even want to be a Death Eater?”

He stiffened. “You don’t know anything,” he hissed.

She nodded. “Knowledge is a slippery thing. Still, I think you’re very sweet to care about your friend that way.”

Draco backed away from her before saying, his eyes narrow and filled with raw fear, “If you know what you think you know, you’ll know I’ll do it. Don’t hurt my friend.”

Theo passed Draco as the blond headed back up to the castle. “What was that all about?” he asked her.

“He mostly wanted to know if my intentions were honorable,” Luna said, looping her arm through his. “You should have told me you didn’t like the cold. We could meet in the library if you’d prefer.”

“I like being alone with you,” he said before making a face and adding, “though it’d be nice to have it warmer.”

She stood up on her tiptoes – he really was ridiculously tall – and went just to brush her lips across his cheek when he dropped his bag and caught her face with his hands and brought his lips to hers. “Is this okay,” he asked, and she stood and thought. 

“We’re on opposite sides of a coming war, I think,” she said, finally but he shook his head.

“Don’t assume I’m on any side. I’m not.”

“You could be on ours,” she offered, but he snorted at that and at her confused look offered up one word as explanation.

“Slytherin.”

“Oh.” She frowned for a moment, then reached up to kiss him again. “Well, that’ll make things interesting. Star-crossed and all that.”

He brushed his thumbs across her cheeks and began to more slowly explore her mouth as they stood there in the cold. She opened her lips cautiously under his probing tongue, and after a few minutes, he pulled back and scooped his bag back up. “The library?” He asked, and she nodded. They were halfway there before he added, “Does this mean you’re my girlfriend, Mermish?”

“Nomenclature,” she said, and he sighed. “It was very kind of Malfoy to come out and defend you,” she added. “It must be nice to have a friend like that.”

“You have friends,” he objected.

“Not really.”

“Potter?” he said, disbelief in his voice. “I know you were with him at the Ministry the night…” He stopped for a moment before he said, his voice very controlled, “the night my father was sent to Azkaban.

“Was your father there?” She stopped walking. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know; everyone was in masks, and then I didn’t want to read the _Prophet_. They lie about everything anyway or slant truths like bad rhymes. That must have been hard for you.” She almost reached a hand up to touch his cheek but didn’t; they were nearly at the castle door, but neither made a move to go in, standing out in the silent, lonely cold. “Harry doesn’t really have friends other than Ron and Hermione. He’s friendly enough, but it’s hard to be him, and he doesn’t trust people. He’s not a tromping out in the snow to confront my boyfriend type of friend.”

“So I am your boyfriend,” Theo said.

“I suppose,” she shrugged. “Theodore Ferdinand Nott.”

“You were listening; I thought you were back into your declensions.”

“Of course.” She looked at him, surprised. “I listen to everything you say.”

. . . . . . . . . .

Their first fight took her by surprise. She wasn’t even sure what it was about, not really. But somehow they were suddenly saying cruel things to one another, and he told her if she thought he’d tolerate that she really was crazy.

She wasn’t even sure what ‘that’ was but she spun away from him and almost ran into Harry. “Yes,” she said loudly, wanting to hurt the boy behind her, wanting to hurt him as much as he’d just hurt her. “Yes, I’d love to go to Slughorn’s party with you, Harry.”

“I… that’d be great, Luna,” Harry said, shoving his glasses up his nose. “I thought you said…”

“No.,” she said it loudly again. “I was wrong. And I’d be happy to go with you.”

“Uh…okay,” the boy stammered.

Theodore Nott pushed past both of them, his academic robes swirling as he headed back to the dungeons.

“Luna,” Harry said, watching her stare after the other boy’s retreating back, “are you sure going with me is a good idea.”

“You don’t think I’m crazy, do you, Harry?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “but I don’t think he does either.”

“Then he shouldn’t have said it,” she said.

. . . . . . . . .

She almost enjoyed the party, did, really, until she realized she was pretending to have a good time and forcing a lighthearted gaiety she didn’t feel. It was the first time she could recall she’d pretended to feel something other than she did to please people and she hated him a little for that. 

She stopped, mid-sentence when she realized that and blinked a few times at Professor Trelawney before excusing herself.

She hated him, except she didn’t. She was twisted up and angry and hurt and hiding all of that to show a boy she didn’t care except she did.

He was waiting outside the entrance to her common room, skulking in a shadow. “I’m sorry,” he said, voice catching a little. “I was a jerk and unfair and – “

“Me too,” she said. Then, “I think I love you. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling at her. “Yeah, that’s okay, Mermish. More than okay.”

. . . . . . . . . .

They spent the spring learning each other the way she had learned declensions, the way he’d learned aerodynamics. He was so quiet, watching everything that happened in his House, everything that happened in the school.

“It’s hard,” he said. “Everyone’s biased against us anyway, and most people just want to join with the Dark Lord. He makes everyone feel like they have a home, a place where they belong. Someplace where being Slytherin is a good thing.”

“Not you?” she asked.

He sighed, leaning his head back against the stone wall of the long-abandoned classroom they’d taken to meeting in on rainy days. “I understand the appeal it’s just… I don’t see why we can’t value all the heritage and all the magic and not hate people at the same time.” He laughed at that. “I sound like a loser, Mermish. Why do you put up with me? Why would you put up with any Slytherin? We’re the boys you aren’t supposed to bring home, you know.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being cunning,” she said, tracing her fingers along the lines of his palm. “Nothing wrong with wanting to do great things. It’s just twisted right now, spiraled in on itself like a swing you’ve turned and turned so you can shriek and scream when you ride the unwinding.”

“I think there’s going to be a lot of screaming,” he said, voice low. 

“Me too,” she admitted.

He shook his head. “No more. Fewer clouds of war, Mermish, and more you. Tell me again how to say ‘I want you’ in one of your languages.” She pulled herself onto his lap and leaned her forehead into his. 

“How about this?” she asked, and as he slid his hands under her jumper, they let themselves forget about what they both knew was coming.

. . . . . . . . .

When the Death Eaters came to Hogwarts the first time Theo wanted desperately to hide, to grab her and hide her away in some corner of some forgotten room where no one would ever find her, no one could hurt her. Instead, he pressed his back up against a wall and watched as Luna dueled black-robed figures, a spinning, whirling, magical figure, so kissed by the light, she glowed even in battle.

He knew about Dumbledore’s Army. He knew about the Order of the Phoenix. No one could be friends with Draco – Draco who even now was hurtling into hell – and not have heard his complaints about the other side of the war. Draco, who’d chosen a side out of spite and resentment. Draco, his best friend. He’d felt the same resentments; no one from Slytherin had been invited to join the D.A. Just by being in his House he wasn’t trusted, wasn’t trustworthy. 

It was hard not to resent that. So hard.

He knew, knowing she was trusted, that she’d trained to fight, trained in a way he hadn’t. He just hadn’t thought about what that meant until she was there, in front of him, cursing men who’d fought for years, putting herself in their path. 

Making herself a target.

He knew his father wasn’t here. Knew the mask. Knew the way his father moved. Knew someday, if this war kept going, that he would be here, or somewhere. Someplace where she was, some battle where she was fighting.

All he could think was fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

He raised a hand towards her, unseen from the shadows. Shaking. 

When the battle was over, when the last of his father’s comrades had fled into the night, taking his best friend with them, chased after by a boy stupid enough to believe love and faith and hope stood a chance when you fought monsters, when everything was quiet, he grabbed her and held on.

“Where are you hurt,” he demanded.

“I’m not,” she said, placing her hand against his chest. “I’m not.” 

“How is that possible?” he asked – begged – running his hands over her, looking for the blood, looking for the injury. “You’re just a girl fighting – “

“I’m very smart,” she said, her voice soft and he nearly crushed her against himself, trembling still. “I am,” she said.

“It won’t be enough,” he said, wanting to grab her by the shoulder and shake her, wanting to take her somewhere else, somewhere away. “War isn’t verb tenses. It isn’t kindness and light and hope and the declension for things tucked into the depths. It isn’t _you_, Mermish.”

“Come feed the thestrals with me,” was all she said. “I’d asked the kitchen to set aside some meat before everything happened.”

. . . . . . . . . . . .

He owled her over the summer, and she sent back notes that made varying degrees of sense. He didn’t care. If she shifted from imaginary animals to linguistics to physics with no concern for linear thought, he could follow her without strain. His father had just noted she was a Lovegood and given his girlfriend no further thought.

She was acceptable. 

The colder part of his mind had made sure his father knew the girl was a pureblood, made sure to guard against her D.A. affiliations. “She’s got some dotty ideas,” he said in passing. “But she’s – “

“I’m sure she’s a lovely girl,” his father had said dismissively. “The Lovegoods are a good family if a bit airy-fairy. I don’t expect a 16-year-old girl to be a bastion of good sense, Theodore. Whatever childish ideas she’s got now I’m sure she’ll settle down when she’s older, when she’s got some adult responsibilities to keep her busy. I’m just glad you’ve settled on someone suitable, my boy; with all the filth that Dumbledore let into your school I’m sure you’ve met plenty of girls I’d not let across the threshold. But a Lovegood, that’s fine; not Sacred Twenty-Eight, of course, but you can marry a Lovegood if you want, son.”

I do want, Theo thought to himself. But we’re just kids. And I don’t know if she wants.

And war was coming. 

No. 

War was here.

He saw her on the train, wearing some summer dress with radishes in her ears and he smiled, feeling the tensions of being a Death Eater’s son slip away. “Mermish,” he said, scooping he against his side with one arm. “I’ve missed you.”

She tipped her face up to him, and he kissed her, feeling her lips soften and part under his. “I missed you so much,” he said again, and she leaned into him, wrapping her arms around him.

“This year,” he said once they were settled into a compartment, once he’d bought her candy and a sandwich and run his hands over her face, relearning the way her cheeks slanted, the way her lips turned up in a smile, “it’s going to be bad.”

She nodded. “I know,” she said. “I was at the Weasley wedding.”

He caught his breath. “You didn’t tell me,” he said.

“You’d worry,” she replied, and he exhaled and shook his head as he looked at her, feeling a familiar frustration bubble under his skin. “Theo, it was fine. The Death Eater’s crashed the reception. They asked who I was and did I know where Harry was and I said no one really knew who they were until the end of their life, if then, and last I’d seen him he was by the dessert table.”

“Why won’t you let me keep you safe?” he tightened his hands on her. The Ministry had fallen, there would be Death Eaters at Hogwarts, and this girl brushed off an interrogation as a philosophical inquiry into the self. If people – if those people – knew she was his she’d be safer. 

Better, right now, to be the girlfriend of the son of a Death Eater than to be whatever it was she really was.

He vowed to kiss her publicly, to overcome his own dislike of crowds and people and be seen holding onto her, doting on her. If he could just brand her as his maybe he could keep her safe from the Carrows, from a victory by the Dark Lord that seemed more and more inevitable.

“There’s no safety anymore,” she said, opening a chocolate frog and watching it hop away under the bench. “You just have to enjoy what’s in front of you and not be afraid.”

“I am afraid, though,” he said and she sighed and leaned her head on him. 

. . . . . . . . . .

He hovered. She watched him watch the Carrows, watch Snape. He barely left her side which made working with the D.A. harder than she’d expected, but she knew he was afraid, knew that looking after her gave him some kind of security so she didn’t slip away from him as often as she could have.

He kissed her with a desperation that spoke of too much knowledge.

Draco Malfoy hadn’t come back. “He’s at home,” Theo said, his tone guarded. “After what happened last year his parents didn’t think he’d be welcomed back.”

She’d nodded. If Theo was afraid, she thought, Draco Malfoy must be terrified. They were the boys who knew the monster. 

She would sit and run her hands through his hair and tell him children’s stories about houses that walked along on chicken feet and step-mothers who led their charges into the woods with stones in their pockets instead of bread. She made sure the stories all ended with the monsters being defeated. Dragons lost their hoards. Witches fell into their own ovens. 

Fiction. Metaphor. Truth.

We’ll win.

You’ll be safe.

She knew he didn’t believe it.

When the Snatchers grabbed her, she wasn’t sure she did anymore.

She supposed the Malfoy dungeons could have been worse. They were cold, and rather dank, and there was a fairly unpleasant varietal of mold growing along one wall, but she had company and regular food and most of the Death Eaters seemed uncomfortable holding her prisoner.

When the house-elf freed her, taking her away to a cottage, she realized she was afraid. 

She wrote to him from the cottage. Owled him every day for months. She talked about nothing. She talked about everything. She didn’t even try to make sense, and he would write back, and she would read the notes and feel like he was there.

He made her feel safe in a world where there was no safety, there was only the flower in front of you, and now she was afraid.

Then Neville called them all back for the final battle.

. . . . . . . . . .

He was horrified when he saw she was standing with all her friends ready to do battle. She’d been away; she’d been _safe_. She’d already survived being Snatched, being held. Why had she come back?

He buried his face in his hands and took a deep breath before running to her. He was ready to shake her, and to hold on to her, and to beg her to leave. She put her hand on his face and smiled. “Theo,” she said, and he could feel himself breaking that he hadn’t seen her in months and now she was here in this place, and he knew – knew – she’d never leave. No matter how afraid she was, she’d never leave.

Knew he couldn’t fight his father. 

The order to lock the Slytherins in the dungeons, though, that took him by surprise. It shouldn’t have, but it did. “Decide your loyalties.” They might as well have said, “Battle people who’ve loved you your whole life and do it at the side of people who don’t trust you and never will or be branded a traitor.”

He left. They all did. 

He’d be condemned as the hated son of his father before he’d trust most of the supposed good guys. His loyalties were only personal, and he cared about protecting exactly one person on the other side.

Before he left, he took a ring off his hand and shoved it onto Luna’s finger. “Things could get bad,” he hissed as they tried to drag him away. “If they win, if anyone tries to hurt you, tell them we’re engaged. My father would recognize the ring, any of them would. I love…”

“Theo,” she said, but he’d already been pushed away from her, was looking back at her with haunted eyes before the doors closed and shut him out of the Great Hall. 

It was the second time the Death Eaters came to fight at Hogwarts, and this time, Theo knew his father was there. This time he couldn’t see her. This time, he didn’t want to hide, and this time, he had no choice. He was untrustworthy because of his House, untrustworthy because he didn’t want to shoot curses at his father. It was hard not to resent that. Hard not to hate the othering other side.

She sent off a Patronus with one simple message. When it found him, locked in the dungeons and pacing with barely controlled rage, he laughed with both relief and terror when it relayed its message. “Luna Aglaia Lovegood.”

“Did your daft girlfriend just send you a message with only her name?” Pansy demanded. “What does that even mean?”

Theo just laughed more, a hysterical sound. “Did you know that some cultures believe that if you know a person’s real name, you have power over them?”

“I don’t get it,” Pansy said, rolling her eyes and pounding her fists against the locked door of their prison. “How is that at all helpful?”

“It’s not meant to be helpful,” he said. “It’s an answer.”

“To _what?_” the other girl demanded before she muttered, “Never mind. You and that dotty weirdo are perfect for each other.”

. . . . . . . .

“Are you sure?” he asked.

She looked over at him, white dress brushing against the tops of her bare feet.

“I’m not the kind of boy you bring home,” he said, hated son of a hated Death Eater. Death Eater brats didn’t marry war heroines. They just didn’t.

“Of course I’m sure,” she said, pushing up so she could brush the tip of her nose against his. “I’ve very smart, remember?”


End file.
